Hard bodies, race and power in the world...

So the football World Cup is finally over — the memory of the final game now forever linked in East Africa with the grisly bombings in Uganda that resulted in 76 deaths.

Our hearts go out to the families of those murdered and injured in the bombings.

A lot could be, has been and will continue to be said about the bombings.

But I do not want, today, to focus on them.

Or the security risks posed to all of us by Al Shabab’s hold on southern Somalia.

Or even the human rights risks now posed to people of Somali descent who may be unjustly targeted by the necessary regional response to Al Shabab.

I want to go back to the World Cup.

Terrorism, counter-terrorism, the Constitution and parliament’s remuneration can hold.

We all deserve a break — and the World Cup provided much-needed and welcome relief from the insanities that mar our day-to-day existence.

To confess: I never played soccer growing up.

My knowledge of the game is rudimentary at best.

But that doesn’t shame me — certainly not when by far the bulk of the game’s global audiences swill back beer, looking anything but athletic and clearly enjoy the game only in that ironically vicarious masculine sense.

That is, simply knowing about the game — its players, their every move and their team’s every move back to the beginning of time — somehow instils the sense that they could be players too.

Never mind that they haven’t kicked a ball about since high school and would probably keel over huffing and puffing if they even tried.

No worries — even though it annoys me that there’s no female team sport that’s watched to the same extent (presumably for the same reason, that female team sports obviously do no provoke that same sense of vicarious masculinity).